1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns monitoring systems for monitoring whether or not a person has reached or left one or more selected destinations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Such systems are already known and are particularly useful in the expanding field of home caring. In the last few years there has been a substantial increase in the number of elderly or incapacitated people who live in their own homes and are reliant on regular visits by carers. The carers can be employed by local authorities or independent organisations. In either case it is necessary for management to be able to monitor the staff who carry out the actual visits in order to ensure that the visits are both actually made and also importantly, made at the right time.
Before the arrival of Computer Integrated Telephony (CTI) such monitoring would normally be carried out on the basis of time logs filled in by individual staff. More recently systems have involved a carer calling into a central office and inputting an identifying PIN number. A similar call on departure will identify the period at which the caller was at a particular address as Caller Line Identification (CLI) will supply the time, date and location of the calls.
A disadvantage of such a system is that calls actually have to be completed by being answered at the central office. This causes additional expense and also takes time.
A concern of the present invention is to provide a simple yet efficient monitoring system.
Thus an embodiment of the invention provides a monitoring system in which incoming calls remain uncompleted, i.e. no expenses incurred, and in which a call is returned automatically to the original caller.
However there still remains the problem in that many organisations employing carers require, for payroll and client billing purposes, confirmation with regard to each visit of the actual identity of the carer rather than just confirmation that a visit has been made at a particular client location. With the earlier situation in which the incoming calls are answered and the carer enters an identifying PIN the carer is identified immediately. In the unanswered system of the first embodiment of the invention the carer's identity is only confirmed by referring to a prior schedule which matches the location from which the incoming call was made with the carer who in accordance with the schedule was meant to make the visit. However this means that the schedule has to be updated constantly as errors can arise if the schedule is out of date. This is difficult to achieve. There is therefore the risk of inaccuracies occurring in the electronic time sheets that are produced as a result of the matching process. Such discrepancies could have serious consequences if the system was to be used as a basis for determining staff pay.